Top 5 Technologies in NFL Stadiums

As football fans around the world turn their attention toward the Miami Dolphins' Sun Life Stadium for Super Bowl XLIV this Sunday, Popular Mechanics looked at the other 30 NFL stadiums and found five that lead the league in innovation.

As football fans around the world turn their attention toward the Miami Dolphins' Sun Life Stadium for Super Bowl XLIV this Sunday, Popular Mechanics looked at the other 30 NFL stadiums and found five that lead the league in innovation.

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2100-inch HDTVs

Dallas CowboysCowboys Stadium, Arlington, Texas

Everything's bigger in Texas, so they say, and far be it from colorful Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to ignore that cliché. His palatial new stadium, outside Dallas, embodies the Lone Star State's famous dictum, with the world's largest retractable roof, a capacity of over 100,000 and a $1.2 billion price tag that dwarf the competition around the NFL. But Jerryworld's signature outsize feature is a pair of the world's largest HDTVs that hang 90 feet above the field.

To build the $40 million screens, the Cowboys enlisted Mitsubishi Diamond Vision Systems, which produced two 2100-inch 1080p LED displays flanked by a pair of 700-inch TVs that face the end zones. The total video board structure weighs 600 tons, spans 60 yards and has five times the square footage of Diamond Vision's next-largest project, the screen at Atlanta's Turner Field. In the course of one game, the video board uses more energy than the average American consumes in four months.

Creating these HDTVs presented Diamond Vision with some challenges, beginning with the fact that "there's not an image processor available that can handle as many pixels that exist on that display," Mitsubishi's Dave Belding says. So each sideline-facing screen requires six processors carefully calibrated to sync up for a seamless image to appear on the board. Diamond Vision faced another hurdle in the manufacturing phase because of the sheer scale of the project. "There were times when every single one of our production lines were taken up with the Cowboys' display," Belding says.

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Retractable Grass

Arizona Cardinals University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale, Ariz.

After an Arizona Cardinals home game, soon after the fans exit the stadium, the field leaves too. While four NFL teams have retractable roofs--the University of Phoenix Stadium included--only the home of the Cardinals has a retractable field, which can roll in and out of the stadium to provide optimal growing conditions for the grass and to give added versatility to the venue.

The Cardinals' notion to install their departing lawn "began with the ownership's desire and belief that football should be played on natural grass," says Dennis Wellner, founding principal of the architecture firm Populous. The team also wanted a retractable roof to protect fans from the desert heat; however, "the opening in the roof would not be large enough for sunlight to fall on the field sufficiently so that the grass could remain healthy," Wellner says. By having a field that rolled out of the stadium to fully bask in sunlight, the Cardinals could have a retractable roof and natural grass.

The field is planted in a roughly 2-acre tray, which has 546 steel wheels rolling on 16 rail tracks installed flush with the stadium floor. Inside the 39-inch-deep tray there's an irrigation and drainage system that works both inside and outside of the stadium. When it's time for the field to leave, 76 1-hp motors roll it out in 75 minutes at a speed of 1/8 mph through a 200-foot-wide opening, where it stays in a cordoned area on the stadium's south side. And that's where the grass will be parked when the Venue hosts Wrestlemania XXVI on March 28, 2010.

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The Loudest Crowd

Seattle SeahawksQwest Field, Seattle, Wash.

On a sunny Sunday morning in March 2000, a 120-decibel implosion took down Seattle's Kingdome. The Seahawks' former home was always known for thunderous noise, with the team's raucous fans creating a deafening home-field advantage, but the deteriorating dome was no longer fit for the NFL. In order to recreate the atmosphere the Kingdome's acoustics created, the Seahawks designed a stadium that would optimally harness the volume of their boisterous fans.

Seahawks owner and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen grew up in the Northwest attending University of Washington football games with his dad, who was a librarian at the school. Husky Stadium is notorious for crowd noise, so Allen wanted to replicate that atmosphere with an open-air venue for his team that was loud like the Kingdome, says Jon Niemuth, principal and design director for Qwest Field's architect AECOM Ellerbe Becket.

The architect fulfilled Allen's request, creating one of the league's loudest stadiums, which can get nearly as noisy as a jet plane--135 decibels--and has disrupted visiting teams enough to induce 95 false-start penalties since 2005, the most in the NFL. Contributing greatly to the cacophony is the partial roof that covers 70 percent of the fans from the elements and reflects sound back to the field. Also, with the smallest footprint in the NFL, Qwest Field has a tight seating arrangement that puts fans really close to the field and concentrates their noise.

And while the deafening environment in Qwest can in part be attributed to its design, Niemuth is quick to point out that his firm "can't create fans to be loud and rabid and crazy the way [Seahawks] fans are."

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One Giant Sunroof

Houston TexansReliant Stadium, Houston, Texas

In 2002 the NFL came back to Houston, five years after the Oilers bolted for Tennessee, and the new franchise, the Texans, debuted in style. Out was the antiquated Astrodome and in was the NFL's first facility with a retractable roof, Reliant Stadium.

For the club, the field's roof wasn't a luxury as much as it was a necessity. After years of watching the Oilers indoors, the Houston fans let the team know that "the people wanted outdoor football," Texans vice president Tony Wyllie says. However, the fans' request presented a problem because the team shares the venue with the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, a winter show that needs to be indoors. The solution became a roof with two 92,000-square-foot panels covered by a translucent fiberglass membrane to promote natural light and reduce the roof's weight, says Dennis Wellner, founding principal of the architecture firm Populous and architect for 14 NFL stadiums.

The two panels meet at the 50-yard line when closed, and they slide along the tracks on two 967-foot-long supertrusses, until they rest open above the end zones. While Houstonians wanted their football outdoors, the searing Texas heat doesn't always make that possible, so the team instituted a "50-80 rule," meaning that the roof would be closed for a game if the weather report for the day predicted rain or temperatures below 50 or above 80 degrees.

Despite good weather conditions, Reliant's roof was closed when it hosted Super Bowl XXXVIII, where the New England Patriots edged out the Carolina Panthers on a game-winning field goal by Adam Vinatieri with just a few seconds remaining.

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Sustainable Stadium

NY Giants & NY JetsThe New Meadowlands Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ

When the Giants and Jets take to the field in the fall for the inaugural season of the New Meadowlands Stadium, the Garden State will be just a little bit greener. No, Jets fans, this isn't a nod to the team's ascendance in the AFC, but rather a recognition of the eco-friendly design of the two teams' new home.

The Giants, Jets and the Environmental Protection Agency have partnered to ensure the new stadium will create less air pollution, conserve water and energy and reduce the environmental impact of construction. The New Meadowlands has 40,000 tons of recycled steel built into it and will utilize 20,000 of the old stadium after its demolished.

Although the new venue is twice as large as Giants Stadium, it will only require 30 percent more energy to operate, through use of efficient lighting and appliances, as well as through aesthetic elements such as the fins around the building's facade. Architect EwingCole incorporated louvers into the building's exterior to shade windows from the sun and cut cooling costs for the stadium, says Don Jones, the firm's director of sustainable design.

Additionally, the New Meadowlands will seek to cut water consumption by more than 25 percent compared to Giants Stadium through use of waterless urinals, low-flow fixtures and high-efficiency irrigation systems. However, an sustainable design, doesn't always guarantee an efficient building once it begins operations, so EwingCole will continue to consult to ensure the stadium stays green, Jones says. "Making a sustainable building is a partnership between the owner, the contractor and the architect."

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